SLAPPING on the sunscreen is killing off one of the planet’s greatest natural spectacles.

Coral reefs are at risk of being destroyed because of the chemicals used to stop us getting sunburnt.

It takes only a miniscule amount of a chemical called oxybenzone – which is contained in 3,500 sunscreen products worldwide – to have a devastating effect on the marine world’s most beautiful and precious habitat.

Scientists warn 62 parts per trillion of oxybenzone – the equivalent to a drop of water in six and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools – is enough to have a disastrous impact on baby coral.

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The offending chemical - oxybenzone - can be found in a range of sunscreens

It is estimated that between 6,000 and 14,000 tons of sunscreen lotion end up in coral reef areas each year, much of which contains between one and 10 per cent oxybenzone.

Scientists warn this puts at least 10 per cent of global reefs at risk of high exposure.

Oxybenzone acts as a sunscreen UV filter but it has a toxicopathological effect on baby coral, causing gross morphological deformities and DNA damage.

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Coral reefs contain a vast amount of biodiversity

Most alarmingly, say scientists, it acts an endocrine disruptor, triggering the coral to encase itself in its own skeleton, leading to death.

Corals are on the planet’s greatest evolutionary wonders, providing an underwater backbone for some of the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on earth.

Reefs can support 800 species of hard coral and as many as 4,000 different types of fish, and there may as 8 million other organisms waiting to be discovered in their complex underwater structures.

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Drugs already being developed from coral reef plants and animals include cures for cancer, arthritis, human bacterial infections and viruses.

Yet the worrying study published in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology reveals how oxybenzone (also known as BP-3; Benzophenone-3) is polluting reefs and comes from swimmers wearing sunscreen as well as wastewater from municipal sewage outfalls and coastal septic systems.

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Coral reefs have provided us with a number of medical solutions

The impact oxybenzone poses is having can be seen in measurements recorded in Hawaii and the US Virgin Islands showing concentrations ranging from 800 parts per trillion to 1.4 parts per million.

This is over 12 times higher than the concentrations necessary to impact on coral.

Marine scientists from Virginia, Florida, Israel, the National Aquarium (US) and the US National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration carried out the study and lead author Dr Craig Downs, of Haereticus Environmental Laboratory Virginia, warns:

“The use of oxybenzone-containing products needs to be seriously deliberated in islands and areas where coral reef conservation is a critical issue.

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“We have lost at least 80 per cent of the coral reefs in the Caribbean.

Any small effort to reduce oxybenzone pollution could mean that a coral reef survives a long, hot summer, or that a degraded area recovers.

“Everyone wants to build coral nurseries for reef restoration, but this will achieve little if the factors that originally killed off the reef remain or intensify in the environment.”

According to MarineSafe, a campaign concerned with the impact of these products on ocean health, there may be as many as 82,000 chemicals polluting our marine environments, just from personal care use.

Professor Alex Rogers of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean at Oxford University, which established MarineSafe said, “Far too little attention is paid to the chemicals entering the ocean and their destructive impact.

We need better understanding, testing and management to ensure that we are not eroding vital ocean resilience through the careless use of marine-toxic ingredients.”

Coral reefs have suffered devastation on a global scale since since the 1970s.

Climate events are the usual cause of coral mortality but long term impacts on a local scale are increasingly thought to be linked to pollution.

Besides sunscreen, oxybenzone can be in other products from lipstick and mascara to shampoo.